Physical Damage on a Beet Membrane

Abstract

Beetroots also known as Beets are used for numerous foods around the world and is also a vegetable that has a membrane. The vegetable Beets have tons of minerals, vitamins and plant compounds. Beets will be used in our experiment to further our research on membrane damages. The roots of beets contain large amounts pigments that are called ‘betacyanin”. Betacyanin are focused in large vacuole of cells, it remains inside the vacuoles surrounded by vacuolar membranes called tonoplast. This is surrounded by a cell wall and cell membrane. (Moore, Vodpich. General Biology I & II Lab School of Natural Sciences). We studied beet ranges in different temperatures and natural solvents and determined which solvents may have stressed and or damaged the membrane the most. If the solution damage the membrane you will notice “betacyanin” leaking through the tonoplast and plasma membrane, this can cause the beet to release color into different solvents which will allow measurement of different level solvents affecting the membrane the most. The beets responded to the freezer than the heat at 55 Celsius because it had the darkest intensity and highest absorbance rate. Our results indicates that the freezer had the most effect than any other temperature.

Introduction

Beets have pigments called batalain. Betalain is a class of red and yellow indole-derived pigments found in plants of the Caryophyllales, where they replace anthocyanin pigments. (Esquivel, P. “Betalains.”). They are named after the Beet Family (Beta) and found in fungus. In flowers they attract insects and also appear in fruits for birds to eat them to spread the seeds around. We as humans have also used beets for its colors and flavor for foods. There have never been any findings that they have any functions like fighting UV light or virus attacks. The color of the beets are stable and has a wide range of pH. (Dhineshkumar.V and Dr.D.Ramasamy. (2016).) In this experiment, we tested how temperature low or high can cause damage to cellular membrane causing the betacyanin to release color from the beet tissues at a certain degree celsius. Because in freezing temperatures water crystallizes as ice and expand because of hydrogen bond alignment, this expansion and formation of ice often ruptures the membranes. (Moore, Vodpich. General Biology I & II Lab School of Natural Sciences). I predicted that freezing temperatures would have the biggest impact than the other temperatures because of the expansion of ice formation.

Methods

We used Beets, Scalpels, Cork Borers, Rulers, Beakers, Distilled water, Six dry test tubes, Refrigerator, Freezer, Spectrometer, Acetone, Methanol, and Isotonic Saline. We first numbered the six tubes and organized which ones will be going into 70, 55, 40, 20, 5, and -5 degrees Celsius. Then cut six same size cylinders of beets using the cork borer with a 5mm inside diameter then trim each cylinder 15mm in length. Each of those beets should be placed in 6 tubes then added distilled water after it’s been in heat/cold temperature. We tested the different colors ranging from 1-10 based from the distilled water and finding the absorbance from those colors. To make sure we were receiving accurate absorbance we made sure we refreshed the spectrometer before testing each tube.

Result

The most damaged membrane was tube 6 because it had the darkest intensity and highest absorbance(Table 1). Tube 6 was placed in about -10 degrees celsius, basically the freezer and because freezing temperatures cause water to crystalize and expand, the expansion caused the membrane to rupture causing the betacyanin to leak and create the darkest intensity. The least damaged membrane was tube 2 because it had the lowest intensity and lowest absorbance data(Table 1). Tube 2 was treated at temperature 55 degrees celsius and surprising had the least damage to the cell membrane because the temperature at that level wouldn’t do much damage to the membrane to rupture or break.

Discussion

The result supported my initial hypothesis that the freezer would cause the most damage to the membrane. After studying and researching about the membrane I have came to tons of topics that the freezer would cause the most damage to the membranes. When adding distilled water to the beets, we learned that low temperatures caused the beet bleed than high temperatures.

Within the whole experiment we learned how solvents and temperature can change beets membrane and how similar it is to cell membranes. For example, as temperature increases around a cell the cell membrane becomes more permeable, this can cause tons of materials to pass the membrane. When the temperature lowers, the cell membrane becomes less permeable and wont allow for materials to pass through. But in our experiment it was quite opposite. Even though temperatures were lower materials such as betacyanin passed through it. But this relates to a cell membrane because also when temperatures increase, it is also permeable and allow more materials inside the cells and when temperatures decrease the cell membrane is less permeable and limits materials from entering.